Yahoo Quiz Module

A customizable series of for-fun quizzes dealing with topics covered by the client’s site. The client was additionally able to track user clicks and direct users to parts of their site relevant with the quiz topics.

The Quiz Module is almost completely customizable. Using a single XML file, a producer may create a module containing two to five quizzes with three questions each. Each quiz can have its own label and icon. Each ranking at the end of a quiz has its own label, graphic and sound.

Upon selecting a quiz, the user is given a set amount of time to answer three questions. The questions are multiple choice with three answer options. Upon selecting an answer the quiz indicates if the answer is correct or incorrect and displays some feedback on what was the correct answer. When the user has finished the three questions, their score is tallied and ranked on a scale of 1 – 3. A custom sound is played corresponding to the ranking.

If the user does not answer the questions in the time allotted, a buzzer goes off and the module displays its “time’s up� state.

At each state of the module, the user has the option to either go back to the main menu and select a different quiz topic or leave the quiz all together and visit a part of Yahoo’s finance site dealing with the quiz topic.

All mouse clicks are tracked so that a producer or manager from within the company is able to see what parts of the module are getting most use. The tracking helps answer questions like, “Are the user’s completing quizzes?� and “Which topic is most popular?� They can not, in fact track which quizzes are single user took or how long a single user interacted with the quiz.

Graphics and sounds are stored as external SWFs which are loaded dynamically at runtime. All buttons and button states are drawn at runtime using Flash’s Drawing API. This helps keep file size, as well as download time, to a minimum.